Record a Custom Activity for Desktop Applications

To create custom
activities for desktop
applications, start by recording users with the Aternity Recorder while they
perform an activity. Then send the recording to a computer with the Aternity Activity Designer to create the
custom activity.

If end users still browse in IE10 or earlier, or if they use IE11 on an older
legacy web app, you must use Aternity Recorder (not
WAC).
Learn
more.

The Aternity Recorder, which is part of the
Agent for End User Devices, collects the events
which the Agent detects
during an activity, such as mouse clicks or changes in the GUI, while recording
a video of the user's actions. The Recorder is
a dormant component of the Agent. The device's end user
must manually enable it.

For example, to create a custom activity of opening the address book in Microsoft
Outlook, record several users performing this action from the email window
or from the meeting request window, using different mouse clicks or keyboard
shortcuts.

Bookmarks are critical to your use of the recorder. Add a bookmark to indicate the beginning and end of an activity in the Aternity Recorder. Use one
bookmark for each occurrence of an activity in your recording, to mark the
approximate time when each activity begins and ends. Later, when you export the
recording to the Aternity Activity Designer, the
bookmarks enable you to quickly locate each activity in the recording.

Record, bookmark, and pinpoint events to measure activity performance

Tip

You can also record events needed to create an application
event. For example record the number of times a particular dialog
appears.

Before you begin

Prepare to record activities on one or more monitored
desktop devices, to capture realistic conditions. If you record
in a test environment, you may inadvertently develop an activity for a beta
version of the app, which may not work with the production version.

Use of the Recorder
requires Agent for End User Devices version
8.0 or later.

For web
applications, use the Aternity Recorder (NOT
WAC) if your end users browse in IE10 or earlier, or if they use IE11 on
older legacy sites where the document mode is 8 or
earlier. To verify, open the site in IE11 and select F12 to
open the Developer Tools pane. In the right hand side of
the top bar of the pane, check the document mode number is
9 or later.

Use Recorder
if you use IE10 or earlier, or for IE11 users when the document mode is
8 or less

Procedure

Step 1 Open the Recorder.

Go to C:\ProgramData\Aternity and
double-click the Aternity Recorder shortcut. The Recorder is
part of the Agent for End User Devices.

Open the Aternity Recorder

The Recorder opens at the top right of your screen. The Recorder's
stopwatch opens at the bottom right.

Open the Recorder
and stopwatch

Field

Description

Bookmarks

Select to create a bookmark marking the start of an
activity.

Tip

We recommend that you select
Settings and configure a bookmark
hotkey, to simplify the marking of video bookmarks
during recording.

(Advanced users) Select to configure the Recorder settings. You can change the settings before or
during recording.

Open recordings folder

Select to open the folder that contains all of your
recordings.

End bookmark

(Appears after you select
Bookmarks.) Select to mark
the end of a bookmark range in the recording.

You can also use your bookmark hotkey to mark the end of
the range.

Step 2 Confirm that the default Auto Capture setting is the
recording mode to ensure that you capture all of the relevant events for the
activity.

Step 3 Select the start icon to
start recording.

Close and re-open the application you are recording, as prompted. This
ensures that the Recorder
captures the application's events.

Recorder workflow

Step 4 Prepare the application so that it is completely ready for you to start the
business activity, to narrow the time range of the captured video and
events.

For example, record a user opening the Outlook address book by several
methods, from within an email or a meeting request, creating a bookmark for
each method.

Step 5 Press your bookmark hotkey, to mark the approximate start of each activity, and
immediately begin the business activity.

Capture as many of the possible ways to open the address book as possible,
creating a separate bookmark for each:

Select the Address Book button.

Click To..., From...,
Cc... or Bcc....

Press Alt+. (shortcut for To....

Press Alt+c (shortcut for Cc....

Press Alt+b (shortcut for Bcc....

Press Ctrl+Shift+b from any of the To...,
From..., Cc...
or Bcc... fields.

Press either the Enter key or the space bar when any of the
To..., From...,
Cc... or Bcc... buttons
are in focus.

Step 6 Press the bookmark hotkey again immediately after the activity is complete to
mark the end of a bookmarked activity, and then provide a name for that segment
of the recording.

Provide a meaningful name for each bookmark. For example, if you received an
error or prompt instead of the address book, you would name the bookmark
Open address book error. Others could be named Click To.
Enter To, Alt+b, and so on.

Name your bookmark

In the example, open the address book in all of the listed ways and create a
bookmark for each. Making this recording with a bookmark for each activity,
takes about 10 minutes.

Step 7 Select the stop icon to
stop the Recorder.

When you stop the Recorder, you
are prompted to save, delete, or continue the recording. We recommend that
you provide a meaningful name for the file.

Name and save your activity recording

Tip

Record the business activity several times with several users.

Have users repeat the business activity while attempting to generate
common errors and confirmation messages, so that you can design your
activity to relate to or ignore various events.